


Primarchs Home Planet Swap Side Stories

by purplekitte



Series: Planet Swap AU [2]
Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eldar, Gender Roles, Multi, Pirates, Polyamory, Sorcerers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-13 03:06:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13561413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: Some short side stories further on in the timeline than the origin stories I'm still writing, now collected in one place.





	1. Meta and initial worldbuilding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some homeworld-swap meta

The full list: Lion->Olympia, II->Cthonia, Fulgrim->Nocturne, Perturabo->Barbarus, Khan->Lycaeus, Russ->Caliban, Dorn->Baal, Curze->Nuceria, Sanguinius->II, Ferrus->Macragge, Sigmar->Nostramo, Angron->Inwit, Guilliman->Fenris, Mortarion->XX, Magnus->Colchis, Horus->Prospero, Lorgar->Chemos, Vulkan->WH Fantasy, Corax->Medusa, Alpharius/Omegon->Chogoris

Names are going to be a really complicated subject to eventually work out. I’m keeping people’s original first names (and Roman numerals) but their last names are world-specific. Ignoring that in most cases they should have been given different first names too, I’d rather fudge that than make them totally unidentifiable. Hence “Roboute Russ” (XIII), “Ferrus Guilliman” (X), “Leman el’Jonson” (VI), “Jaghatai Corax” (V), “Angron Dorn” (XII), etc.

Legion names, for one thing depend on which Legions were given their names by the Emperor and which were named/renamed by their primarchs, some of which is canonically confirmed and most never specified? I’m now imagining this scene:

Leman: “Space Wolves? I like it. Let’s keep that. Hey, we should put wolf iconography on everything and name everything–” Luther: “No.” “But–” “No.”

So Lion would still have the Dark Angels and they’d still be the Ist and have their Terran Marines, but they’d being recruiting out of Olympia instead of Caliban once he’s found. If I ever write post-origin story fluff, I’m going to have to index very carefully who is and is not Terran because it’s going to be a complicated mess. Like, Leman is going to get Heoroth Longfang and Zahariel. Dorn will have Sigismund and Amit. Curze gets Zso Sahaal but Sigmar gets Sevatar. Angron gets Khârn and Polux. All the Mournival guys are IInd instead of Sons of Horus. Magnus gets Ahriman and Erebus, oh god damn it, it gets worse. Plus a lot of people who rose to high position under one primarch just won’t under another, because they don’t fit right or they die early, or even under the same primarch because they grew up different and the Legion is different. Like Roboute probably won’t have Bulveye and those guys around because they weren’t his kind of people, Marius Gage is still his first captain and type of person.

By all means, I have written AUs where no one turns to Chaos and launches a rebellion, but this isn’t one of them. A Heresy civil war rose pretty naturally from the threads in my mind as I was working on this. Most the loyalists are still loyalists and even more so the traitors are still traitors. I didn’t plan this and don’t know why, except that maybe a lot of them have underlying reasons for becoming traitors that weren’t really fixed just by not having shitty childhoods. The two who went traitor -> loyalist turn out to be Fulgrim and Horus, whose canon reasons were admittedly pretty stupid.

I: Lion of Olympia, Dark Angels, part siege masters, part precision cold tactics/analysis. Collective personality of a sack of rocks. Lion killed his adopted father and thinks A Game of Thrones is just how life goes. Leman keeps wanting to be Lion’s friend and Lion is so weirded by this overly-enthusiastic behaviour. Good ending: Leman stops Lion from turning to Chaos out of sheer not seeing any reason not to. Bad/probably more canonical ending: He does not and Lion kills him while he’s trying, and Luther kills Lion to avenge him.

II: Janos of Cthonia, Celestial Griffons, long-range firepower/heavy weapons specialists. I stole this character fully from bloodilymerry’s original version of “Ripples”, I’m sorry. Raised by the Emperor, but they’re not as close as He was with Horus in canon. No one ever gets appointed Warmaster, because it’s definitely not going to be him but the Emperor doesn’t really trust anyone else enough. Has a lot of insecurities and worries a lot/thinks too much, kinda quiet and unadorned and unassuming, worries that while he was found first he’s not as good as each of his subsequent brothers and why are any of them looking to him for his experience? Loyalist, probably killed by Magnus during the rebellion trying to show off/prove himself to his father/himself.

III: Fulgrim of Nocturne, Emperor’s Children, Eldar/Dark Eldar-influenced fighting styles (fast glass cannons), highly-specialized units. Reputation as a high-tech shooty army who don’t like getting their hands dirty. Fulgrim and Janos get along even though they seem to have very diametric personalities, and the latter’s Legion tactics are a lot more about fixed positions than runny and dodgy like the IIIrd. He and Perturabo are sort of art-friends. Frequently under suspicion for having too much contact with/influence from the Eldar, yet simultaneously has a much better grip on how to not be Slaaneshi because he grew up fighting them, remember? He’s had various fights with the VIIrd over this, which ultimately drove him towards the loyalist side.

IV: Perturabo of Barbarus, Iron Warriors, part siege, part necron-esque tactics, part necromancy. Doesn’t really think of humans as his species. Perturabo and Magnus are friends who like talking about old books, labyrinths, and necromancy. Not much of a question he was going to join him, though I like to pretend there was a possible good alt!end where he is redeemed by Fulgrim and art. But probably Fulgrim tries and gets killed, then gets avenged by Ferrus. He and Lion can bond over their attempts at having no emotions whatsoever and their histories of patricide. Post-Heresy, Nurgle, battlecry “For rust and ruin!”

V: Jaghatai Corax, Storm Ravens, fast attack specialists, pro-bikes but even more pro-jump packs and really into void warfare and gunships. Good friends with Corvus; both sympathetic to Mortarion and Konrad, but they stay loyalist rather than running off with their side rebellion. He was raised by subversive political philosophers and friggin loves quoting paragraphs of this random shit at people at the drop of a hat. Really hates the very idea of being trapped anywhere.

VI: Leman el’Jonson, Space Wolves, knights who are technically werewolves. Luther is his right-hand man/truest brother; though the main origin stories I’m writing are supposed to be gen, theirs is still intensely homoerotic, because they totally are lovers and Leman doesn’t fuck around with hiding his feelings and isn’t completely oblivious to everyone around him unlike some people. Lots of people in the Imperium are scandalised later by how much Leman respects Luther and treats him as an equal and better than some of his primarch brothers, and Leman gives zero fucks. Leman likes acting like a bull in a china shop through all Caliban’s secret cabals and stuff, while actually being much craftier and more purposeful than anyone but Luther gives him credit for. Loyalist. Still the Emperor’s Executioner, and the VIth probably were the ones to wipe out the XIIth. And maybe the IXth too, but that was more of a mercy-kill. Lots of people really dislike him for various reasons, but he gets along well enough with Sigmar, Ferrus, Lion, and Janos. Everyone expects him and Rogal to get along more because they have a whole lot in common, but they can’t stand each other’s personalities.

VII: Rogal of Baal, Imperial Fists, later: Black Templars. Less fortification-experts, more BT-esque killing the mutant, the heretic, and the witch aspect of his personality, because grew up in the radiation wastes fighting mutants all the time as the favourite son of his tribe, with everything urging him to see things in black and white and never compromise. Rogal still likes art and culture but he’s like “what are these stone buildings? fuck that, I live in a tent like a normal person” about architecture. I really want to write Sigismund and Amit being Legion-bros for some reason, and Rogal in burnoose.

Really, really hates Magnus. They think they are loyalists. Eventually gets so trigger happy even the Imperium’s like “dude” “doing the Emperor’s work” “those guys were on our side” “they weren’t on our side enough” “okay guys, we’ve really got to do something about that loose cannon” “You’re all traitors aren’t you, fuck you, you’re on my hit list for punishment too, kill of traitors, purge of the impure and unworthy” and he kills all the navigators and astropaths and then Khorne shows up. That ends well.

So he’s just running around killing psykers and xenos and other Chaos forces and anyone not zealous enough in their service to the Emperor by a very broad definition of not good enough and anyone representing the horrible government around the High Lords of Terra, who are traitors unlike him, the true loyalist. Khorne gives zero fucks as long as the blood flows. They spill plenty of their own too, when they feel unworthy/repentant, and are more inclined to torturing people until they “recant” than your traditional Khornate kill whatever’s in front of you on the spot. They have some mutations like fusing with their armour they don’t think counts; tentacle-y mutations and they will cut off the offending limb (or head, or whatever).

VIII: Konrad of Nuceria, World Eaters, close-combat specialists. They don’t really use combat drugs let alone anything approaching the Nails because they fought rebellions to end that shit. They’re also not into terror tactics, because really anyone who isn’t a total dweeb would punch you anyway even if they know they’re going to lose. Strong sense of community and family and just sorta hanging out and sticking with each other. General anti-authoritative streak, especially from anyone not seem as being in-group or having community consensus. Konrad with dreadlocks.

He and Mortarion are best friends, and like to talk about justice and tyranny. They run off with the rebellion not because they’re that into Magnus, but because they want to be on the side that’s against the Imperium. They’re big fans of Angron and are all like “ah man if we’d been found when that happened we’d have been on his side and it would have been different.” Post-Heresy, anti-Imperium and anti-Chaos, though the latter in that hypocritical VIIIth way, and prone to psyker degeneration. They’re actually good about being bros with each other even if they’ve split into separate warbands. Even if they end up on opposite sides of a battle, the next time they meet, they don’t hold a grudge because that just happens. They’re pretty easy-going in general, especially for Chaos Marines, in between fits of intense, gleeful violence, and are at least somewhat selective about only killing the powerful/the oppressors and inviting the abused/those on the outskirts of society to hang out with them and be bros. They’ve always favoured close combat for a number of reasons, but among them they really want to be sure they’re hacking to death the people they intended to, who deserve it, which is much easier when you’re doing it one by one; the main difference post-Heresy was they gave up all pretence whatsoever of this being who the Imperium wanted them to kill.

IX: Sanguinius, Blood Angels, Lost Primarch. Redacted. Died early on and his Legion went nuts from the psychic feedback and had to be put down.

X: Ferrus Guilliman, Ultramarines, pretty well-balanced force though Ferrus favours tech and heavy weapons. Ferrus and Konor Guilliman were just two people who seem like they’d have more in common, who actually spent his whole childhood not on the same wavelength. Which mostly consisted of Konor going “No, Ferrus, try not being an asshole for a change” every ten minutes, “Blaming people for their weakness means you’re a shitty leader at using them”. He likes industrialisation and mechanisation and efficiency, but he’s more balanced and thoughtful and responsible and less hot-headed asshole than canon Ferrus Manus. He misses his dad and thinks about things he said back in the day a lot even though they argued constantly when he was alive, and he doesn’t feel bad at all about the roaring rampage of revenge he went on after Konor died. Close with Fulgrim, and gets along with Roboute, Sigmar, and Corvus in particular. Hates Rogal for being the sort of asshole he could have been if he hadn’t been raised right. Loyalist. Doesn’t have metal hands because why would that have happened on Macragge?

XI: Sigmar [probably has a last name] of Nostramo, Night Lords, I really have no idea yet how to make a cross between a canon Night Lords and Fantasy Battles Empire army or what that would even be, except steampunk will be involved somewhere. A very versatile force with a lot of different gangs/units having totally different specialties? Adopted son of big-shot gang-lord, and uniting the warring gangs under his banner/overlordship is kinda his thing. Very charismatic/popular back home, which admittedly was not that high a bar for good governance. If people were talking about “who was really a candidate for Warmaster” in this universe, he’d be on the list, along with Roboute and Ferrus, but none of them have the sheer overwhelming only-person-it-could-have-been of canon Horus, or the Emperor’s personal affection, and their personal problems are all a bit more immediately obvious. Loyalist.

XII: Angron Dorn, War Hounds, part fortification-specialists, part close combat specialists. Purged Legion basically as soon as Leman got found because he and the Emperor did not see eye to eye. Really intensely moral and protective of others and empathetic and want to improve life and equality for everyone and not willing to put up with shit like cutting corners or the complete lack of concern about civilian casualties in compliances. Probably not dead but on ice in the basement of the Palace; Legion largely wiped out and removed from records, but rumours persist.

XIII: Roboute Russ, Imperial Hounds, well-rounded army. Savagery is really not his thing; he does bring Fenrisian wolves to war, but as dogs at their brothers’ sides, not as wild packs or as a substitute for perfectly good motorized vehicles. Needs to be played by Chris Hemsworth. He’s very competent and successful, but he doesn’t have the powerbase of his own empire he does in canon and he has a lot more insecurities about being unpopular and not a rugged and vicious enough warlord and liking having nice things like civilisation and cities and steam-power and health care and kraken-sushi. He would probably be very happy doing statesman things all the time on newly discovered planets, but those planets aren’t really his and he avoids Fenris itself as much as possible. He doesn’t hate men or anything but due to Fenrisian gender roles/stereotypes, he’s a lot more automatically comfortable with women and employs a lot of female advisors and sorceresses and Army regiments and naval officers and Silent Sisterhood squads. Loyalist. Roboute is taken out early from the Heresy by a rebellion on Fenris, which probably goes in a canon!Caliban direction.

XIV: Mortarion Garza (Mordechai ben Bityah), Dusk Raiders, likes precision strikes and sniping/assassination and is very fond of his Apothecaries. Raised by an ex-intelligence agent who fought for the proto-Imperium in the Unification Wars, before her dishonourable discharge on moral grounds, in radioactive future Australia, which would make more sense if I ever friggin finished my stupid “the twins’ big fat Jewish childhood” WIP. He’s a mass of disillusionment and cynicism with the Imperium and mankind in general, though he still tries to believe he can be a hero and make things better. Has strong ethical views and disagrees with a lot of Imperial policies, but joined temporary after being “found” really late in the Crusade with the promise “Oh, you’re a primarch, you’ll be in charge of things and able to do whatever you like your way.” He has a particularly long list of previous experiences as a low-ranking solider and scientist and religious pilgrim and all sorts of things before becoming a primarch general. Doesn’t like psykers but isn’t so actively racist. I have no idea how the XIVth end up in the post-Heresy era, because they’re yet another anti-Imperium and anti-Chaos group after he and Konrad ran off together to fight tyranny.

XV: Magnus of Colchis, Thousand Sons, religious fanatic psykers. Psychic god-complex Magnus is not something the galaxy needs. Magnus with Kor Phaeron and Erebus and Ahriman and Argel Tal in his Legion are not things the galaxy needs. All the bad decisions. Imagine all of Magnus and Lorgar’s bad decisions. Yes. Eventually goes fuck everything, I’m a better god than Dad anyway, and goes off to start a rebellion and get manipulated by Tzeentch more. The overall theme of this story arc is “Magnus no.”

XVI: Horus of Prospero, Luna Wolves, spear-tips and psykers. Very diplomacy-oriented, charismatic, intellectual, refined. Secretly super insecure about his lack of any psychic powers whatsoever even what any child on Prospero could do, but maybe if he’s so overwhelming and perfect enough no one will notice. He is in some ways more Fulgrim than Fulgrim is. I want things in Prospero’s early history to go different but I don’t know exactly how yet. His Legion has a lot of Librarians, but they’re less strong than the canon XVth, while I’m just going to call this version of the XVth stronger when they have it but less universal. Simultaneously really drawn by Magnus and is super jealous and hopes he dies in a fire; the latter of which wins out -> loyalist.

XVII: Lorgar of Chemos, Word Bearers, hey look another Legion of religious fanatics and psykers, though he ended up with a lot of the really good swordsmen too. Voted idiot most likely to think Magnus’ rebellion is a good idea. Grew up seeing visions and wanting a brighter future and leading religious revival/fanatical rebellion from the empty pointlessness of life on Chemos. Lots of people died and if he hadn’t been found when he did they’d have probably all starved to death. More inclined to supplement their innate psychic powers with ritual magic, while the XVth tend to be sorcery snobs.

XVIII: Vulkan Kurganson, Lost Primarch. Inexplicable Carrot Ironfoundersson. Legion wasn’t purged exactly but after the Emperor found his planet and concluded he was permanently lost the couple of them still alive were quietly decommissioned and moved into other Legions.

XIX: Corvus Morragul, Iron Ravens, like tech a lot especially bikes and jump packs, lots of fast attack and heavy weapons. Was raised by actual people instead of by rocks. Not that impressed by digging for old archeotech when hey guys we could be build new stuff and it will be cool and spaceships. He’s still quiet and non-effusive and stand-offish, but that’s proper Medusian behaviour. He’s not that mechanical personally, he’d rather play with tech other people build than build it himself. In general more of a “supervising” sort of leader who only steps in occasionally when he has to. Good friends with Jaghatai. Loyalist.

XX: Alpharius/Omegon Khan, White Scars, fast attack and quick raids then fading out. Don’t have the whole anonymous thing in the Legion, and everyone knows they’re twins. Considered mercurial trickster gods on Chogoris, spirits of the wild winds, and can be petty and vicious while having “fun” that eventually leads to Slaanesh.


	2. Lion and Luther meet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lion of Olympia meets Luther, in Leman el'Jonson’s bed. (Leman/Lion, Leman/Luther, PG-13)

The Lion scowled at the Astartes taking undue liberties without his lord’s leave. Jonson was asleep, or possibly pretending to be, but did that permit a subordinate to be so casual and without reverence?

‘You will note,’ the Astartes replied as he finished removing his armour and lay down next to Leman, on the far side of the Lion, ‘that this is _my_ bed and you are the one intruding upon it. I am graciously allowing that because it was my beloved who invited you.’

The Lion was unsure where the border was between unselfconscious arrogance and offended pride. He was not skilled with interpreting sarcasm or banter. He was not used to anything but wide-eyed, slack-jawed awe from Astartes, but he’d also heard that they were inclined to gossip about how their primarch was better than others, so perhaps this did happen regularly behind his back.

He didn’t like having potential enemies, but he would rather have what even he could guess with some confidence was open hostility than a good deception up until he was stabbed in the back by a jealous lover.

Yet Luther--for this must be Luther, the upstart--showed no resentment towards his lover or reluctance to curl against his side. He was never sure when someone would decide to kill a spouse’s lover while still clinging to the spouse, kill a spouse and ignore the lover, or kill both. Luther grinned to show off fangs. There was always a hint of something wild and animal about Space Wolves, however much they polished their armour and trimmed their beards.

Leman murmured in his maybe-sleep and pulled Luther closer against him. He didn’t roll away from the Lion, but he felt colder anyway. It occurred to him how strange it was that someone might be jealous of him when tomorrow, and from then on, it would be Luther having Leman and the Lion not.

(And no one would ever look at him the way Luther just had at Leman, some part of him said, his conscious mind unable to parse its meaning but something deeper found it significant.)

Not that he wanted the boisterous, annoying knight. What Leman had dragged him to bed to do to him had been enjoyable enough at the time, but in retrospect it had been wet and messy and rather embarrassing and he disliked how his brain had short-circuited and he’d been reduced to shouting his passions while his treacherous body arched and shook around him.

Still, some part of him wondered how they would look together, if Leman rolled Luther over right now. He thought they’d fit together well, the immense bulk of the primarch covering and enveloping the other man completely. He wondered how careful they’d be, how soft, because only another primarch could have taken the force Leman had used with him that still left him sore. He wondered how much like warriors they’d be, pushing challenging, fighting, exalting in each other’s strength, fingers and teeth digging into one another.

Leman el’Jonson didn’t seem the sort of be embarrassed in any way. He certainly wouldn’t bother to throw his audience out first. If anything, he might drag the Lion over and offer to share, which he heard some people did. He could almost imagine Luther rolling his eyes at something Leman said, but leaning back against him anyway and drawing the Lion in.

He felt embarrassed? sick? to be fantasising like that, but Leman’s arm flung over his stomach tightened as he moved to pull away. ‘Mhm hum,’ Leman mumbled eloquently.

‘He means “Don’t go”,’ Luther translated.

‘I rather would. I’ve been accommodating enough.’

‘I’ll bet,’ Luther muttered quietly, eyes on him, but louder he said, ‘He’ll tackle you and try to sleep on you next.’

He groaned. ‘He would, wouldn’t he?’

‘He is that way.’ Luther punched Leman in the shoulder, and there was no way he was really asleep.

‘ _Why?_ ’ He immediately regretted the question, afraid just asking it gave too much away.

Luther gave Leman a long, fond look. ‘I don’t understand him either, and you’d think I would if anyone did.’

The Lion felt an unusual moment of kinship in commiseration, but he pushed it away. This was a stranger and it meant nothing. This brother of his blood he at least had a potential bond with, though he’d seen enough fratricide on Olympia to know better than people’s insistence about how important family _should_ be.

He supposed he preferred his sons to of the Ist Legion to any other company. But he would tolerate this company for now. Begrudgingly.


	3. Embarassing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leman is an embarrassment to be around, but sometimes Luther can’t bring himself to mind. (Leman/Luther, PG-13)

Leman devoured a huge leg of roast turkey with his teeth, while Luther pinched off mouthfuls with his fingers to eat, like a civilised person. Not that that was enough to satisfy Leman, no, he had to lean over every few minutes and persuade Luther to feed him some tidbit. Luther had tried to teach Leman many things over the years and some had taken, but table manners had not been among them.

Of course it was mostly an excuse to lick Luther’s fingers. To Luther’s annoyance, the supplicants who served the knights while they feasted were putting seconds on Luther’s plate rather than Leman’s, as if they had forgotten which of them was a giant who ate three times as much as an ordinary man. As if they weren’t giggling to each other as soon as the eyes of their elders were no longer on them. The less discrete of the full knights were eyeing the two of them, more of them indulgent than disapproving.

He would rather have been treated with respect, dignity, and obedience, but he was sure he could look nothing but ridiculous with Leman’s arm over his shoulder. His clever tongue traced hints of grease from Luther’s fingers, obscene with promise, and Luther tried not to show any reaction.

Leman grinned at him, and Luther couldn’t hold onto his anger at Leman making a fool of him, because Leman was so obviously, radiantly, unselfconsciously happy, and Luther did want that for him so much. He tried not to smile like too much of an idiot, he tried not to blush, he tried not to...

‘Grand Master, Sar Luther,’ a voice interrupted them. It was Zahariel, one of the up-and-coming young knights newly inducted into the Order. He wouldn’t look directly at them, but spoke as if honour-bound to continue whatever his personal feelings. ‘I have been nominated by our brothers to deliver this message: “Get a room.”’

Leman broke into gaffes, and Luther had to grin as well, his good humour restored to be so teased by their brothers. Luther dismissed the boy, letting him know he bore him no ill-will for daring to speak such words to his elders, for Leman had eyes only for him.

‘Shall we take our leave before our brothers get deeper in their cups, and upset your dignity more?’

‘More than you have already managed? I don’t know if they’re up for it.’ Still, he nodded, staring at Leman like a moth caught by a flame.

Leman pushed away from the shredded remains of their meal and swept Luther up in his arms, like a man with a new bride. Luther, the diplomat of the two, reacted how he thought best: laughing like this was a joke or a prank, something to cover the depth of the truth there, and waved off the cheer from the more playful of their fellow knights.

In Leman’s bed--in _their_ bed--his laughter continued, breathless, true, as Leman showed off more uses he’d found for his tongue and Luther’s flesh.


	4. Sorcerer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roboute of the Russ is a sorcerer. He’s the strongest man on Fenris–-he’s a primarch, how could he not be?–-but Fenris would tell him a sorcerer is no proper man at all. Yet a sorcerer he became anyway. (Roboute, Lorgar, Magnus, Leman/Luther, Horus, Hierax, Sorot Tchure, Mortarion, Roboute/OMC, PG-13)

[From the personal journal of Roboute Russ, encrypted and never published. Written in a custom font for an alphabet developed by the young primarch in an attempt to see if a new writing system without the historical and religious baggage of traditional Fenrisian runes would be more easily adopted. It wasn’t, and the attempt abandoned until he had the political position to push through a full set of reforms whole-sale.]

They call me conservative and I want to laugh. I don’t, because I’m not much inclined to it and I prefer not to insult a man’s honour over trivialities, but really. I, the firebrand?

Old Fenris was a conservative place. Life was just so marginal there. The ways of our ancestors allowed us to live, as a civilisation, year in and year out, through ice and fire. Change was dangerous, experimenting was heretical. If you tried something new and failed, or even partially succeeded but not as much as you’d estimated on the first try, then the whole tribe starved. Full stop. I heard this over and over, implicitly and explicitly.

At least one of my brothers is from a similar background, grew up hearing the same thing, from the stories I hear of him. Chemos was industrialised rather than feral, but humanity scraped by with the most marginal room for error in resource management as well.

And he failed. Too impractical, too decadent, too misguided, whatever it was. Maybe my golden brother would have learned if he’d had another round to try, but he wouldn’t have. His people would have all starved if the Imperium hadn’t come when it did. The stories don’t frame it quite that way, but it’s obvious from the subtext.

See, I want to say to the world. I did not end up like him. He is the spectre that was held over me, but I did not. I was luckier. I was better.

I have no intention of saying such a thing publicly. I have no interest in an honour-duel with a brother I’ve barely met over an insult. But I’ve thought such things to myself, for my own sake.

Here he is, the very imagine of everything I was warned about, every cautionary tale, every insult I heard over and over. He is what I was told I would inevitably be. I said no, I wouldn’t, I would do better, be better, and I didn’t become that. How can I not look down on him, who did?

Another brother I feel I should love better than I do: I am only a petty sorcerer in comparison to him, but I am also a sorcerer. He too toppled the old ways and old gods in favour of new ways and progress. He once believed himself something other than human, a god, but I once believed myself a wolf, so who am I to talk? Yet, I find him lacking in caution. Ironic, isn’t it? I fear him and what he will wrought like I was once feared.

I am no great seer of the wyrd and the yet-to-come; that is not my speciality. Not by the standards of my people and I hear they do things differently in the traditions and conceptualisations of other places, like Colchis. Strictly speaking many would claim what I’m doing is not magic at all: I am taking patterns that exist or have happened before and I am extrapolating based on them. In every time, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. Yet it’s magic because I can see the future, and it’s esoterica because I know what others do not. I’m sure my father has seen it too and will handle it. Regardless, it helps me understand that fear.

It’s irrational of me to still want the approval of short-sighted chieftains a century dead. If I wanted validation, I could get it. The neophytes these days, the children, they know no Fenris but the modern one, the civilised world I made from a feral one. Surely the schools taught them flattering things about me. I won. My followers prospered and my enemies waned in their few distant islands. They never lived with the reasons behind Fenrisian conservatism. They probably don’t even know the old superstitions, why I hesitate to put my brothers’ names on a dataslate page, even knowing intellectually it won’t steal his soul or such a thing.

Yet I want it still. I do not love this Great Crusade, though I understand its necessity and I fight in it, like I fought those who raised banner against me on Fenris. I do not love war. I’m good at it, I am told I was made for it, but something went wrong and I do not love it.

Fenris had such rigid ideas of what it meant to be a warrior--how such a man should be, what was right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable--and I didn’t fit that mould quite right and eventually chose to stop trying and cast it aside and do as I thought best. I raised armies, but I don’t _like_ warriors. Those I loved best and who gave me the best support and advice were not men of war, those men who fit the pattern I disliked.

What I want is to be remembered as a great statesman. I don’t want to fight compliances against humans--they are unpleasant chores. I want the scattered scions of humanity to be thrilled to see us in the sky, to eagerly join the Imperium and agree we will make their lives better. How can people hear ‘We will lower your infant mortality rate’ and argue with that? That’s why I’d rather treat with mothers than warriors.

Likely this does not make me what my father wanted in a son. I’ve heard it before. Personally, I would say my fathers have been all well and good, but I would rather be my mother’s son.

*

Leman el’Jonson was good enough company, likeable and well-liked, as jovial as he was deadly when crossed. It was a familiar mould of jarls on Fenris too, so Roboute knew how to be cordial back without being intimidated, but he had never been so popular himself.

‘Those are fine dogs you have.’ It wasn’t an insult to the Imperial Hounds and their primarch when Leman said it, wild and bearded enough to be Fenrisian himself. ‘We bred dogs back on Caliban too, hunting dogs and scent hounds and the like. Good dogs, but I’m not so stiff-necked as to refuse to admit yours are better.’

‘Larger certainly,’ Roboute said modestly. He snipped the dark Calibani ale, thick enough ‘soup’ might have been a more fitting word than ‘drink’. ‘It’s the wolf blood.’

‘There are no wolves on Caliban.’

‘You call yourselves the Space Wolves anyway?’ he joked.

‘Not in the wild. In legend. My brother says he once encountered a beast that put him in mind of one, before I was found, but I’ve never seen such a thing.’ Leman didn’t need to specify which brother he meant, when it was not one of the Emperor’s sons.

Roboute absently scratched his sister’s--his dog’s--ears. ‘There are many on Fenris. Once they were all wild, before I was found, but we keep dogs now. There’s less wild than there was.’

‘That is the way of things. Progress. The Imperium. It’s a dream worth following.’

‘Yes.’ Roboute wet his lips again. ‘We have many legends on wolves on Fenris too. Children raised by wolves. Sorceresses who can see through their eyes or change their skins to be as wolves.’

‘We have such stories on Caliban too,’ Leman said, neutrally. As if the conversation were idle rather than personal. ‘We fight like men. We might use dogs in war, but we burn witches, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Roboute replied, with a neutrality that was much icier. Acknowledgement of what had been said, not agreement. It was a matter of public record that Roboute had outlawed the practice among the Russ, whether his brother knew that much about him or not. Roboute thought he did.

They should have been able to be friends. Both raised feral in the wilds, if the stories were to be believed. They both had civilised the wild and brought prosperity and human control to their planets. Leman even had a man as his lover who he submitted to, though Roboute reminded himself that didn’t have the _meaning_ elsewhere that it did on Fenris.

With his sorcerous othersight, Roboute could see Leman’s shadow was wolf-shaped, as clear as his own pack’s. It was obvious and he wanted to ask, wanted to discuss how it manifested for him and how he understood and used that part of himself. Had Leman lost it and had to relearn the magic like Roboute had, or had he retained it from childhood? Was he a full shapeshifter? He had heard rumours to that effect about his sons, but gossip was unreliable. Did he weave--or whatever metaphor his planet had for things of fate?

But Leman had made clear he was a proper man, a warrior, not one who used magic like a woman, like a crutch. No more elaboration was needed, not when Roboute had heard it so many times before, whatever specifics might differ between their cultures, if he had pushed for details.

‘They’re just dogs now. Tamed, they are no longer wolves. Good companions, a piece of home, but of course we make war like civilised people now.’

‘Of course,’ Leman agreed, and refilled his mug, words still unsaid between them.

*

‘There are... ways, for someone without the talent. So I’ve heard.’

‘The sorcerous cheats: spilling blood and summoning daemons, trading promises for power? We have the stories but it’s rarely done on Prospero. Some have the talent stronger than others, but to be a blind man with no sight and take a poor substitute of listening to echoes? That would just be sad. I don’t mind fumbling around in the dark.’ Horus laughed.

It was a fake laugh, an inadequate bandage over a wound like a furrow crossing a field. Roboute didn’t need magic to see that. These were words he repeated to himself everyday, as if saying them enough would make him believe them. He had to believe them.

Roboute shrugged, not wanting to intrude on his brother’s pain and knowing he had nothing to commiserate that wouldn’t make one of them resent the other. ‘We call it cheating on Fenris too, the unclean magics. Personally, I have nothing against psykers, but I lack the natural talent as well.’

‘Our father made us with what we each needed, I suppose, out of the traits He possesses. We can’t have it all, for who but He could be Him?’

It was easy to fall back on meaningless platitudes praising the Emperor for His wisdom. Roboute pitied Horus more than he envied him his upbringing amidst light and learning, he decided. Horus must be bitter towards Roboute for his sorcery, but he would not be the first target out of their brothers for it. Roboute had learned what he knew, not been so lucky as to be born with it. Horus would have to admit he could too and had chosen not to in order to hate him properly for it.

He would be polite and drop the subject. He wouldn’t say he personally preferred magic that was learned and acquired to that that came naturally, because the former was understood and owned while the latter was lost as easily as it came. He wouldn’t describe how wonderful it was to put on a cloak of feathers and soar or to dream skies he’d never seen or to sort a tangle of threads into a pattern. He was proud of what he was, what he had become, but a lifetime of being told he should be ashamed had taught him how to be silent. For once that silence was for the sake of mercy.

*

‘The primarch doesn’t like you?’ Captain Hierax of the Imperial Hounds asked the Thousand Son seconded to his company, Sorot Tchure. Hierax was not a man inclined to playfulness, but it was still clearly not meant as an insult or value judgement from his presentation.

‘Does your primarch like anyone?’ Tchure wasn’t offended, really. He had heard from various of his brothers that they had it much worse. The Imperial Hounds were not openly hostile to him, especially the Terrans.

Hierax paused for a moment, and Tchure saw he had accidentally hit a nerve. ‘Perhaps it would easier if he didn’t. I used to think that was simply how it was between primarch and Legion, but as more and more of them were found, we came to realise it was just us. I’ve never heard the Dark Angels or Iron Warriors complain their primarchs are unaffectionate to them in particular.’

‘Not to gossip of our betters, but everything I’ve ever heard agrees the Lion has the warmth and social graces of a rock. I had thought Lord Russ worked well enough with his First Captain, before he dismissed me entirely.’

‘He tolerates Marius Gage personally, comes as close to liking him as any of us. A few other officers. He is a primarch, mind. He is a tactical genius beyond compare. Gage, in turn, is a good man. I respect him and am glad the primarch found his continued service as First Captain pleasing. They have a good working relationship. They are not friends. Perhaps friends is the wrong word, but they are not your primarch and First Captain Ahriman, or Rogal and Sigismund or the like.’ Hierax clasped him on the shoulder. ‘We do not speak of it openly, for there is no merit from doing so, but it’s no secret and you should know if you’re going to be learning from the XIIIth: Our primarch hates his Legion.’

‘Really.’ Tchure didn’t quite phrase it as a question. The revelation was too personal, too obviously painful, though the wound was old and well picked at.

‘He considers us a necessary evil, so he commands us and instructs us, but something unworthy of love all the same, something without virtue except compared to a worse alternative. The Fenrisians call him resigned. They have a saying about the lot of a raided woman being her sons becoming raiders themselves. I suppose he saw you as a warrior rather than a witch, or you might have earned his favour.’

‘I don’t know if that was a compliment or not.’

‘Nor do I. There’s nothing more to speak of, though.’

‘Perhaps speaking of it has some merit. I am an outsider here, but our Chaplains tells us wounds fester when kept silent. We have a practice in the Thousand Sons, from the brotherhoods on Colchis and from planets we’ve reclaimed like Davin: We call them warrior lodges, where all can come and speak, brother-to-brother, without rank or fear of reprimand. That we might know each other as brothers and reaffirm our traditions as warriors.’

‘Perhaps we will learn from you as you learn from us then, as your primarch surely intended.’

‘Yes,’ Tchure agreed, ‘that was ever his intention.’

*

‘What happened to our brother, the IXth?’

Roboute shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It was just after I was found, yes, but I wasn’t there. Janos was, but you’d never drag an answer out of him when he was told not speak of it by our father.’

‘Ah,’ said Mortarion. Roboute hoped he believed him, because he was being honest.

‘Personally, I don’t believe the more... slanderous rumours. He was already dead or died in some accident the Emperor sought to prevent. That was more the mood of it.’ He did not speak of the XIIth and Mortarion hadn’t asked; no one spoke of the XIIth.

‘Ah,’ said Mortarion again, not giving much away. No one knew much about him at all, just that Fulgrim had shown up with him and he didn’t like drawing attention to himself. ‘Thank you for telling me about early Crusade history even so,’ he said politely. ‘I’ve talked to Konrad and Fulgrim, but they haven’t been around nearly as long, of course.’

Somehow it always seemed to happen that anyone who seemed personable among their brothers, anyone he might have become friends with, already had a closer friend. Everyone knew Mortarion had fastened immediately on Konrad, even if he and Roboute finished their tiptoeing around each other with positive impressions. Roboute liked both Jaghatai and Corvus, for example, but they made anyone feel like a third-wheel between them.

‘If you have more questions, please. I was second-found so I’ve been around, and I’m from a planet that was much unlike the Imperium’s ideals before that so I understand the culture shock.’

‘Primitive and superstitious?’ Mortarion asked, still too neutral to know if he was saying his home had been too or merely commenting on stories about Fenris.

‘It was.’

‘But you don’t believe such nonsense now.’

Roboute shrugged. ‘It’s not so easy to shrug off everything you once thought you knew, especially once adulthood sets in. I support the Imperial way, but I am a primitive barbarian in many of my habits still. It never seemed worth the effort to change, and personally I find we have more strength from diversity than cookie-cutter adherence to some Terran mould.’

‘You believe the Imperial Truth to be untrue?’ Mortarion asked, more daring this time. Still deniable, but not fooling anyone.

‘I believe the Imperial Truth to be useful. My homeworld was a very... magical place. Reality did not work there the way the physicists and iterators say it’s supposed to. That is undeniable fact. I practice the wyrding ways because that’s how we protected ourselves there. Yet I believe the world of spirits and magic is not safe and is not benevolent, so the Emperor is quite correct in keeping people from it and doling it out carefully. Sometimes a lie is more politically useful.’

He could have said, but didn’t, that lies were more than rhetoric, they were magic. They were what magic was built on. Convince someone of something that wasn’t true and you made it real and that was magic--that a man could become a wolf, that they could not see the thing in front of their eyes, that the future could be known. Magic worked because of a sufficient number of people thinking to themselves it seemed like it should work that way gave it a certain weight of reality, made it exist in the reflection of the Otherside and bleed through. You didn’t go around talking about that sort of thing, though, a practitioner had to learn it themself.

Mortarion considered, giving none of his thoughts away until he was ready to. ‘I don’t disagree. Religion as a series of ethical beliefs and comforting behaviours, fine. The spirits, as you call them--daemons, Chaos, unbegotten, I’ve heard many names for them--yes they exist, but they should be kept from humans and human worship. I’m not fond of sorcery either, but I feel you to be responsible and cautious, so I have no quarrel with you personally, brother.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

‘I disapprove of the treatment of psykers as a group and feel we as a species could handle that better, but people have been arguing that since before the Old Night fell. Anyway, I can’t help but worry creating an empire on a lie is like a house on a foundation of sand.’

Roboute had no good answer to that. ‘I too find it doesn’t sit well, but I do not claim to know the mind of our father. He’s too old, too vast, too powerful, knows too much we don’t. He orders and we can only trust and obey.’

‘The law is not in heaven,’ Mortarion muttered, but didn’t say more. He left him on friendly terms, co-conspirators in some things, but never quite close enough to be called friends or to call on each other when conspiracy gave way to true rebellion.

*

Vinsentti Katrinson didn’t look back on the ‘good old days’ with any fondness, not that he was old enough to remember them personally. Who would want to have lived before running water and electric heaters? People thought they’d lost power they’d once had, that was who imagined they could have been jarl if only things had been different and everyone else were beneath them. Vinsentti knew he wasn’t in that category--life would not have been good for him when barbarians still ruled Fenris, not when he was _fuðflogi_ and hated fighting. Thank the Emperor for Roboute Russ, he said without reservation.

Even with the comfortable life from being the son of Katrin Lexasdottir, _forseti_ of the Althing in trust for the absent primarch, he’d still gone to the diplomatic core, to the iterators, got off Fenris. It was a good life too, bringing Imperial enlightenment to the other barbarians out there, hopefully getting them to be a bit less terrible to each other, being in the primarch’s own fleet.

As for the primarch himself... ‘Lord Russ, what’s he like?’ Off-worlders called him by his clan name, as if a quarter of the planet didn’t share the same tribal ties, but they didn’t know better. Thengirsson, his older byname, was too political when the Emperor on Earth was supposed to be his one and only father, and they hadn’t been that close besides, saga said (and if Thengirsson was a controversial statement, Eirsson would be tossing a frag grenade). ‘Who’s he sleeping with?’ he asked Lady Amaranth of Phaedrus, one of the lord’s chief advisors, old enough to know and to not be a rival for the unspoken _And how do I get it to be me?_

On Fenris, they said he was _stroðinn_ , he let men have him. These days they might add ‘not that there’s anything wrong with that’ if they were liberal about the changes to gender roles in modern times, but prejudices didn’t disappear overnight. The Imperials insulted him for surrounding himself mostly with women and said he was sleeping with them. Vinsentti didn’t know, which was why you watched carefully, why you asked.

‘Make the first move,’ she told him. ‘And the second. He doesn’t like to himself, worries a show of interest from him might come out sounding like an order because of what he is, but he might be interested back. You seem like his type. He’d like to settle down with someone who could equal him, I think, but he’s a primarch and we’re not, so he makes due with various close “friends” to handle some fraction of what he can give for as long as we’ll have him.’

The obvious question was why he didn’t seek companionship among his brother primarchs, but that answer was obvious. Vinsentti had never met any of them, at that time, but he’d heard of them. Roboute fought when he needed to and had some Astartes under his command he got along well enough with, the very duty-bound and stalwart sort, but it was clear as day that he disliked war and disliked warriors. He’d been made for war by the Emperor, but Fenris had soured him to it. Vinsentti found that easy to understand. Warrior cultures were not kind to those who didn’t fit in.

Be bold, he figured, so he flirted. He wasn’t clever as a primarch with words, but he could try and not let himself be cowed by the interaction. He could indulge in long, lingering gazes, wondering how his blond braids would feel in his hands. He cast little cantrips--not because he expected so small a love spell would enchant a primarch, but to put his interest out there. He wasn’t much of a sorcerer, he only knew a few small household magics his mother had taught him, but this was the sort of spell that could get a girl in a lot of trouble back in the day, flirting and enticing a man into an affair. For a man to cast it, back then it would certainly had been more trouble than his life was worth.

Roboute smiled back, a quirk of amusement at the corner of his lips and his beard. He indulged. He let himself be courted.

Vinsentti made a point of courting not just him, but making friendly with his entire inner circle. He knew any relationship was never going to be exclusive, and honestly was grateful--the idea of a primarch’s attention on him and him alone was far too intimidating. He might not be interested in them in the same way, especially the women, but he wanted to show off he was the sort of man who played nice, who fit into that world. Better to play to the mould of the sassy gay friend in a Terran romantic drama than the tragic dead gay, the _argr_ oathbreaker, the _seiðskratti_ demon-summoner.

Roboute showed his interest back with reserve. Nothing that could be taken only one way, nothing that couldn’t be innocent if Vinsentti wanted to take it that way. But interest back he showed. He ended up, for instance, with the nicest sweater he had owned in his life. Roboute gave such things to half the ship crew that crossed his path in a given fortnight, especially the foreigners who complained about iceworlders and their use of air conditioning; it didn’t have to mean anything.

He was always fidgeting, Roboute was. Like he needed to be doing something with his hands all the time, didn’t matter what, just to get some of the pent up energy of having a brain like that out. One of the things he did was knit, muttering something about fine motor control, as if working with thread were anything but fraught with _meaning_ on Fenris.

The sweater was also perfectly his size, which was surely trivial for a primarch to do with a glance, but it was not lost on Vinsentti that he had been looking and had been thinking about him. It could have been innocent, but Vinsentti had made clear it didn’t need to be.

‘Very generous, jarl, but if you want to give gifts to me, I have things I want to tithe to you.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘Lean down so I can kiss you and you’ll find out.’

It was sweet and slow as caramel, the passion there but never fully unleashed. Later, when their dance around each other eventually lead them to Roboute’s bed, he said, ‘I’m sorry for my weakness.’

‘Don’t be,’ Roboute said, carding his red braids, holding him close under the furs after they’d finished, his dogs adding themselves to the pile. It was the Fenrisian way, the whole family sleeping in the same bed for warmth. He smelled good, like dried flowers and fragrant herbs. ‘Why would we seek others if not to make ourselves better, to shore up frailties and fix broken places within us? Personally, I’d rather have silk than steel against my chest. I would rather avoid yet another competition, whether I’d win or lose, in favour not needing to fight. I have many strong arms I can call upon; I would rather be loved with a whole heart.’

‘You deserve it,’ Vinsentti said, face buried in his neck. ‘You deserve so much more, but that I can give.’


	5. Vacation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roboute of the Russ goes on vacation. It is something of a busman’s holiday. [Roboute/OFC, Marius Gage, PG-13]

Roboute sat silently in the Stormbird during the deployment, eyes closed, barely breathing. Then, with sudden animation, he told Gage, ‘Send an extra column to the pass marked Gamma Phi on the map. There’s a hidden heavy weapons emplacement there I want taken out.’

‘Yes, lord.’ He didn’t ask if Roboute had figured that out from assimilating details buried in tactical briefings with that brain of his, or if he had been doing what Gage strongly suspected he had been. Roboute sensed the question and answered anyway.

‘A little bird told me.’ It was a joke because it was a common Terran phrase, but it was also the literal truth. Roboute had tried to describe to Gage once or twice what he actually saw when he went into one of his trances. It gave Gage a headache just to image seeing out of the eyes of thousands of animals and birds all at once, and he doubted anyone but a primarch could possibly have processed all that information into anything useful. Witches on Fenris, Gage had heard, used a single familiar at a time, because they weren’t him.

Roboute absently pet one of his dogs, which stretched itself over his legs. Gage found himself jealous for a moment, despite the absurdity of the image of Roboute putting a paternal hand on his head and telling him he was a good boy. An unworthy thought for a warrior, and the first captain of a Legion Astartes of all people.

*

Unsurprisingly, Roboute was not effusive with his praise after the war either. The leaders of this world had refused to join the Imperium and had taken up arms against them, so the Imperial Hounds had slaughtered their armies with brutal efficiency because that was what you did. Roboute was much happier, Gage thought, finding competent and responsible functionaries and middle managers to replace the ruling elite whose heads he had removed from their bodies. His vassal states would be well-run in the long-term and would continue sending tribute--he would not just show up to raid and leave with only what goods and thralls he could fit in his longboat after killing the warriors of a tribe.

But he could only justify staying so long when the Imperium supposedly had people for such things, while he had been made for war and his warriors were chomping at the bit to redeploy, to sink their teeth into something.

Gage found him watching the ocean, at the beach resort the planet’s ruling elite had retreated to from the capital once their defeat was imminent. Roboute had set up their temporary headquarters there, because it was where the real deals got made and the more accurate account books were kept.

‘Does this remind you of Fenris?’ he asked. He purposefully avoided the word ‘home’. Gage knew perfectly well Roboute had not gone back to Fenris since he’d left and that was nothing but a conscious choice to avoid it. ‘Besides the weather?’

Roboute allowed his curiosity. ‘It has water, so I suppose there’s a basic resemblance, but most of the details are wrong.’

‘Are you going to go out on the water? I don’t know what Fenrisians do when off-duty’--or whatever it was civilians called their free time--‘but you have discharged all the obligations you put on your schedule for this stage of the disengagement, especially those that have any need to be handled by you in person.’

‘No one swims for pleasure on Fenris, Marius,’ Roboute told him, a matter-of-fact correction not a reprimand. ‘If you fall off the boat, you get back on as quickly as you can while hoping you don’t freeze to death or get dragged down and devoured by whatever you were fishing.’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised, lord.’

‘However,’ Roboute added, with a glint in his eye, striding past him and leaping easily from the balcony he’d been on to the dock below, ‘I am a primarch and neither cold nor beasts ever bothered me overly much.’

‘Sir?’

‘I suppose your idea does have merit. I think I will go sailing. I have complete confidence in your ability to redeploy forces and prepare to disembark from the system.’

‘Of course, lord.’

‘Then while you’re at it, reassure my huscarls I haven’t been abducted and don’t require their services.’ Not that there was much that could kidnap a primarch, but being one’s bodyguard was an exercise in fretting over nothing. Roboute looked up from the knot he was undoing to untie a yacht from the marina to lock eyes with one of his wolves, then reported, ‘And watch my dogs. They don’t want to get their fur wet.’

‘Yes, lord,’ Gage said with bemusement, as his primarch easily vaulted the edge of the boat and turned the sail more to his liking by pulling on a complicated knot of ropes that meant nothing to the Terran.

‘Use the location beacon on my armour to find me in an emergency, though I doubt there will be need.’

‘Yes, lord.’ It was interesting to watch him. A primarch was good at everything he did, naturally, but Roboute obviously knew sailing as trivially as Gage had been taught to pilot a Stormbird or Rhino.

‘I’ll be back in a day or two.’

‘Enjoy your vacation,’ Gage called after him, when he was sure Roboute was almost out of hearing range and they could both be saved the embarrassment of a response. With the primarch’s peerless knowledge of wind and current, he was soon lost to the horizon even to Gage’s Astartes vision.

*

 _You are being hunted,_ the turtle told Roboute as he shared his dinner of seared fish with it, it’s shell wide enough his outstretched arms couldn’t have reached from end to end.

Aye, he could find them easily through the water once alerted. _Pirates, raiders._ The turtle did the mental equivalent of a shrug. All humans were the same to it, but Roboute was human and therefore he cared. He hated pirates. At least raiding was a way of life on Fenris when he’d been a child, taken for granted. Pirates on a world such as this must have specifically chosen to live on the margins of society and prey upon others.

They were still circling, believing themselves out of range of any senses he might have, testing this lone boat for any surprises before deciding whether to take it or not.

Roboute felt no need to retrieve his armour from the boat. His black bodyglove was no protection, but he wouldn’t need protecting. Instead, he surfaced enough to take a deep breath, then let himself sink again to a comfortable level where no one would think to look and trusted his prodigious lung capacity as he abandoned his body.

From the eyes of seabirds, waterspiders, school of eels, he watched the pirates on their decks. A queen they had, with her sons and daughters as lieutenants and other wretches currying favour in her crew. They adorned themselves with stolen luxuries, her sons with the bones of fish and human teeth braided into their hair, her daughters festooned with the skulls of children. No, Roboute felt no inclination towards mercy.

However, one of his gulls, missing a leg and dragging along kelp with the other, lingered by an open porthole. When it was dragged inside, he almost cut the connection, expecting it to end up in a stew-pot. However, patient hands untangled it from the net of kelp, before leaving it to the breadcrumbs from a barely touched dinner that had attracted it in the first place.

Roboute used a touch of his will to redirect the bird’s gaze, rather than watching whatever it gave him, to study the young woman in the cabin. Dark and calloused like a sailor but with the pen-callouses of an accountant. She kept her eyes lowered even when alone and her bearing made to deflection attention; not a high ranked member of the crew.

The gull cooed at her for her attention and she ignored it. It picked at her frizzy hair and the shiny bits of her threadbare finery. ‘Hey!’ she complained as it made off with an earring. She swatted at it, but it moved to the porthole, holding her earring triumphant in its beak. ‘Come back here.’

She followed the thieving bird, it becoming increasingly obvious to her it was leading her somewhere, making sure she never fell too far behind. Why she clearly had no idea, but she moved easily between ships in the fleet by ropes and planks and water. Sentries took note of her, but gave her only the casual insults that were how these low-lives said hello and made no attempt to block her path or enquire too hard into her affairs.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ she told the bird, perched now at the far end of the row-boat she had taken out. She let the current take her rather than wasting too much energy on rowing, instead reading herself for another leap at the stupid bird now that it was in reach.

‘Hello.’

Only her complete familiarity with watercrafts let her catch herself without falling into the ocean or upending the whole boat as she jumped.

Roboute directed the gull to drop the earring into his palm and offered it back to her. ‘My apologies for the run-around.’

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Roboute Russ. I was hoping you would take a message to your captain for me. Tell her to surrender, or I’ll sink her ships and put her at the bottom of the ocean.’

‘Mother won’t like that. No rival pirate you. You with the coast guard?’

‘Yes,’ he decided on. He was, technically, the highest authority on this planet, so for simplicity’s sake he might as well call himself a government man. ‘You’re her daughter?’

‘Fourth and least favoured, I’m afraid. Kylia Theros.’

‘A pleasure. Will you tell her?’

She studies him, critically, but he was a primarch. He could see his aura work on her, her decision he meant what he said and could do it with ease. ‘I will.’

*

To his lack of surprise, it didn’t go well, but forms needed to be observed. He caught snatches of screaming about ‘snitching’ and ‘treacherous scut’, but by the time he finished some errands, Kylia was merely locked in her cabin and nursing a black eye. She did not seem particularly concerned about or unfamiliar with her situation and was eating a ration bar tucked away from the rats in a stash she kept is expectation of being sent to bed without supper with some regularity.

At his knock, she climbed out her window. No one had cared that much for her entrapment, not when the ocean was all around them. She grabbed the dorsal fin of a waiting dolphin and let it take her to him.

‘What now?’ she asked. ‘Are you going to call in patrol boards, or helicopters?’

He favoured her with a grin to confirm her confidence in him wasn’t unfounded, despite her clear lack of knowledge of what to expect.

From the depth rose up a huge shape, like the ocean floor itself had moved. Then another. Then another. No Fenrisian krakens were these, but the pirates spat oaths and blasphemies at the pod of massive whales splintering their ships with their bulk.

Some raced for hull-mounted guns or harpoons, but they only succeeding in angering the vast titans, scratching their skin and lodging bullets in their layers of blubber rather than hitting anything vital. More tried to reach for their weapons, only to find ropes chewing through, holes cut by a combat blade already leaking water onto sparking electronics.

The pirates piled in their lifeboats, as many as not ending up in the water by accident or in the infighting over whose fault this was. Roboute kept a mental eye on where the sharks were, but did not keep them away from the smell of blood in the water.

He smiled at Kylia again, but she grabbed his arm in alarm. ‘The slaves.’

‘What?’

‘The crew will have gone for the lifeboats, but no one will have bothered with them. We have captives aboard, for sale to the traffickers on the black market.’

His body hummed with the adrenaline of need for instant action. ‘There’s still time. I’ll get them.’

‘I know where.’

With no time to argue or ask directions, he simply nodded. ‘Hold your breath and hold on.’

Kylia gasped in air and clung to his neck and the back of his shoulders as he dove, using his primarch strength and speed to fly through the water.

It was too dark for her to see by what moonlight filtered this deep, but she knew where the ships had been on the surface and her own bearings to know where they sank. By the time she directed him to the right bulkhead, he could hear the faint ripples of sound in water, of screaming.

The screams grew louder as he used his strength even without power-armour to rip the side of the ship away. There was still a pocket of air trapped between decks, letting the captives contemplate their fate, trapped behind bars in a sinking ship, before they drowned. They drew back in horror from him, some sea monster, but he didn’t have time for that. Out. Up. Towards the surface. He dragged them into the water, to be free of the corpse of the ship pulling them into the depths.

Roboute brought them as far as he could, but he could feel Kylia’s growing discomfort against his back, her squirming as she tried to convince her body to hold her breath one more moment, that the stale air in her lungs was better than drowning. She was born and raised at sea to have made it this long, but she was no primarch. He broke the surface to her grateful gasp.

‘Requesting pick-up and medical attention for nineteen individuals, people presumably listed as missing or dead at sea at my location,’ he voxed to Gage later. ‘Send the local authorities to pick up a group of adrift criminals at this set of coordinates, based on how long it takes them to get here and my understanding of the currents.’

‘You were gone less than one day, sire.’

‘Roboute out, first captain.’

He took his leave quickly of the freed captives once he had them safely aboard his yacht and wrapped in what emergency blankets he could find. He didn’t want their effusive gratitude, not when it was his negligence that had almost killed them in the first place. Kylia floated beside him on her back, enjoying the water.

‘I’m not of a mind to have you arrested for piracy. If you want, I can set you up somewhere with enough to get a new life started.’

‘Or?’

‘Or I suppose I could have you arrested for piracy, if you think you deserve it and want to pay your debt to society.’

She snorted, aware from his tone he was teasing. ‘Or?’

‘What do you think I’m going to say?’

‘You’re going to ask me to be your woman.’

‘Do you want to be my woman?’

She turned in the water, sleek as an otter, and leaned over to kiss him enthusiastically.

‘Do you know what I am?’ he asked, not the first time she needed to pull back for air.

‘A sea god? You might have noticed I can’t breathe underwater, though, unless you have some magic you can do now that I’ve agreed to be your bride..’

‘Do you, by any chance, know what’s going on anywhere else on this planet?’

‘We have short-wave radio, but we’re a month out of port.’

‘I have some explaining to do.’

*

Kylia was more intimidated later to see him on land, reaching his full height instead of floating and in full armour. She fought to hide it as she fought for balance on ground not rocking under her, which was the most he could hope for and showed spirit.

Roboute politely asked her patience with him for leaving her alone and like a fish out of water before seeing to his responsibilities and listening to his captains’ reports. To Gage he said, ‘Could you speak to the chief huscarl about finding Fröken Theros some responsibilities to occupy herself with on the battle-barge? She can keep accounts, I believe, so perhaps with the tithe collectors.’

‘It will be done, lord.’

Gage was too well-trained and Terran to express his opinion openly to his jarl, but Roboute responded to his look anyway. ‘Yes, I was gone hardly eighteen hours and already managed to bring home strays.’

‘I did not say that. I am sure she is a perfectly pleasant and competent woman who will be an asset to the fleet, and besides it is entirely in your right to recruit or conscript anyone you choose without explanation.’

‘Marius,’ Roboute said with entirely faux seriousness, ‘I order you to tell me exactly what you’re actually thinking at this moment.’

Gage gave him a look back but could not bring himself to disobey a direct order from his primarch. ‘“I can’t believe I’m going to have to walk in on you necking everywhere with your newest girlfriend for the next week until the initial infatuation wears off and it’s only occasionally.”’

‘Good man. Also, who taught you that word? Was it someone Fenrisian?’

Gage gave him another look, one of momentary annoyance and embarrassment that said I hate you, but affectionately.


	6. First

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: First [Fulgrim/Ferrus, Fulgrim/OFC]

‘So you’re not a virgin.’

‘Obviously.’ Fulgrim made an odd expression, like he was both trying to smirk and roll his eyes at once.

Ferrus corrected himself, ‘ _Weren’t_ a virgin. Who have you been with?’

‘Why? Are you jealous?’ That sounded too defensive to his ears. ‘You weren’t either.’

‘I was raised as a ne’er-do-well nobleman. Of course I’ve gotten laid. I thought you were more… provincial, though. And I get the impression you hadn’t been with a man before. You serious about a farmgirl back home, or are you unattached?’

Fulgrim liked Ferrus, but he wasn’t sure how much he trusted him yet. They seemed to fit together, so he didn’t want to push him away, but he doubted his brother would understand or approve. Yet it felt wrong to lie, and too obvious.

‘It’s fine if you are. Throne knows Roboute is always bringing home strays he dotes on. If I insisted on wedding you before bedding you, I would have asked in a different order.’

‘Atani.’ Fulgrim hadn’t meant to say that, but he couldn’t take it back. ‘Is the name of an old friend of mine. A close friend. Who I lost my virginity to. But we… do not have that sort of claim on each other. We do not expect to be at each others’ sides. I’m a primarch and she…’ is an eldar farseer, ‘walks a different path.’

He remembered Atani how she had looked when he had last seen her. She had been asleep but still lounging in bed with a graceful hauteur. Draped over her was a lace shift of finely woven wool and white gold thread, still darker than her pale skin, contrasted with beads of jet and black diamond, her pale hair a waterfall down her back. It had been intended to be worn over some other garment when he’d given it to her, so it showed rather a lot of that skin through the many holes in the weave when worn alone.

He’d thought about waking her but hadn’t. He’d wanted to look at her, not have her interfere by saying something inconvenient.

As a distraction, Fulgrim shot Ferrus his most seductive smile. ‘So I’m giving you a trial run.’

Ferrus snorted. ‘I don’t deserve better than that?’

‘Mmm. I’m still undecided.’

‘I’ll have to convince you then.’

‘Do try.’


	7. Travel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Travel [OFC/OFC, one-sided OFC/Lotara Sarrin, sfw, 40k-era]

The _Conqueror_ was nowhere near spaceworthy, but they had at least had the means at their disposal to normalise pressure and oxygenate the bridge. Alexandrina was taking advantage of the situation to not wear her armour and shift around the room trying to find a comfortable position while maintaining her connection to the ship.

She had plenty of room to work with. When the bridge had been completely empty, as it had been for so long, it had simply been a landmark. Leticia hadn’t expected anyone there any more than she expected a bridge crew on a spacehulk. Now it was partially occupied with servitors they could afford to cart over on short notice, and the dozen or so people in the space made her more conscious of the fact it should have contained hundreds.

Alex pulled herself up from where she’d been lying on her stomach on a table to migrate to another spot, trailing wires. Her back was still red and puffy with recent incisions to install the interface ports, the sports bra and bandages she was wearing already showing stray bloodstains from whenever she pulled a stitch, but they smelled like they were healing cleanly to Leticia. Performing spinal surgery on herself had probably not been the smartest idea anyone had ever had, but at least she was good at it. Her dog followed each time, but he had been persuaded to stop whining.

Alex transferred herself to one of the chairs in a mortal rather than Astartes scale, a command-throne with the best view of the proceedings in the bridge, had there been any. She looked… not in the least like _her_ , among other things because she was carrying about battered cushions, but it was nice to see that chair filled.

‘That used to be the flag captain’s seat,’ Leticia told her. Like most Astartes she wasn’t much for making idle conversation, but this seemed important to say. ‘Lotara Sarrin, the best Terra ever produced, and the meanest. I hear she once decked an Astartes captain for getting blood on her deck. This was her ship. It was once meant for other destinations, but there was no XIIth Legion by the time it got off the Martian docks, so we got it.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘I don’t know. I never heard she’d died specifically, but after ten thousand years it’s unlikely she’s still alive anywhere, even with subjective time being less than that. She’s probably dead,’ Leticia repeated, ‘or worse than dead. I hope she died in battle, on some other ship if not on _her_ ship. She deserved it.’

‘It sounds like you admired her a lot, Letty.’ Alexandrina made no move to shift from where she was out of some perceived unworthiness to take another’s place. Leticia supposed learning you were a primarch’s chosen heir and running with it already displayed a monumental level of self-confidence. If a stranger behaved that way, Leticia would have called it arrogance, perhaps ‘megamanical arrogance,’ but it was Alex. She knew perfectly well Alex thought nothing she didn’t couldn’t be replicated by any other person who tried and studied and practiced, and that she merely relied on the power of friendship with her comrades, like the protagonist of one of the shounen picture-stories she kept shoving under Leticia’s nose.

‘I did.’ Leticia looked around quickly, her helmet immediately confirming the only people on the bridge were them and the dog and the servitors, who didn’t count. ‘I’m named after her. When I was thinking of changing my name but hadn’t told anyone yet, I tried out “Lotty” for awhile. It got shifted to Letty because I was embarrassed someone would realise, and Leticia for the respectability of a proper name rather than a nickname.’

She’s never told anyone that before. Alex felt safe, because she was her girlfriend but mostly because she hadn’t been there or known any of the people involved back in the day. ‘I won’t tell,’ Alex promised immediately, picking up on her feelings. After a moment of consideration, she added, ‘But maybe Sanrio knows what happened to her. You ought to ask.’

‘Maybe I’ll do that. If we get out of here.’

‘We will.’

‘You’re so sure now?’

‘I made my decision and it has to succeed so it does no good to show doubt because contingency planning won’t actually save us from anything.’ Alex shrugged, then winced and brushed off Bucephalus’ whine. ‘Though honestly I do believe that: it would be too anticlimactic to die right now and I’d be offended. Also, psychic primarch who knew these people were going to be in the this exact place at this exact time in the distant future, seems pretty unlikely he’d have gone through so much trouble if we were going to die five minutes later without accomplishing anything. I don’t think that’s safe logic to base any decisions on going forward, but I might as well get one use out of it.’

‘What is it we’re supposed to accomplish?’

‘I don’t know. Space is outside its distribution range, so I haven’t gotten to the end of the manga where Luffy goes to Raftel and finds the One Piece and becomes the Pirate King.’

‘Pop culture references from your planet that I don’t understand.’

‘Yes dear. The thing is, I’m not here to reunite the Legion or conquer the galaxy or something. You know me. I never cared about that and haven’t suddenly changed. But we have the Mission and things might happen along the way. _I’m_ here to see the galaxy, a view of the infinite I’ve never seen. Maybe people will be disappointed with that, but they can come along and see it too.’

‘I don’t know why the hell you were the chosen one, but I suppose it makes sense we had to wait this long. Warlords are interchangeable and dime-a-dozen but no one else is as weird as you.’ Leticia shook her head. She had never sought command either, but since the promotion to sergeant had been pushed on her back in the day she had pushed herself to be the responsible one. Alexandrina was the one who continually did the impossible throughout their acquaintance, things that didn’t really make sense for anyone and especially not for an unaugmented mortal. _Able to make friends with anyone_ was a well-respected Nucerian value, and if it was really a superpower rather than a running joke, well…

Alex patted the ship and Leticia could hear the change in the hum of the cognitators fans and see the blink of lights as it responded to her. ‘The ship wants to fly too. It was asleep for a long time, dreaming of flying the galaxy, the great space battles it fought in, the people it once carried and captain it once had. It also misses her. It’s so excited to wake up again and return to travelling the galaxy, however harsh the pins-and-needles from millennia of stillness.’

Leticia was pretty sure the ship was not actually sentient, but Alex was speaking with absolute, literal conviction, not as though she was projecting or making a metaphor. Honestly, if Alex had seduced a totally non-sentient battle-barge machine-spirit, she would not be the least surprised.

‘The Vth Legion will answer our call. It will fly again.’

‘There, now you’re getting it.’


	8. The Death of Luther of Caliban

‘I am old and I am dying,’ Luther said.

The Apothecaries chittered around him, denying it. He had taken worse wounds before. Space Marines could live indefinitely, which he could not prove one way or another because he was the eldest of them but he didn’t really believe. They’d thought that during the height of the Crusade, but everyone had been much younger then, so young. And he’d been too old when he’d taken the Canis Helix anyway.

‘I am old and I am ready to die.’ That was harder to dispute, but they tried.

‘You are our Legion Master. How will we go on without you?’ they asked, blooded knights with tears in their eyes.

‘You went on without a primarch. All the Legions have learned to.’

‘We have had you. You are…’ Unwilling to put that to words, they fell to, ‘You have been as a second father to us.’

How once he would have rejoiced at those words, to be considered a primarch’s equal, even by the children who did not know of what they spoke. Now he knew the comparison to be no more than the literal truth. He could hardly remember what it had been like to be Luther rather than this Luther-and-Leman chimera he had become.

‘You will carry on without me by carrying on his will, as I have.’

That was a polite lie to inspire men. They would not carry the burden he carried. He could feel the physical weight of it even now, making light his wounds. He could hear the growl of Leman’s voice in his own voice, the heat of Leman’s breath in his ear, the pressure on his back like Leman was leaning his big, hairy carcass against him to read over his shoulder. It was as though Leman were a wolf-skin cloak and Luther wore him.

‘His will is your will. You speak for him now, but the legends say even when he was alive, you were his guiding star.’

‘Then remember me well and the word of your Emperor. In humanity’s name, conquer the forest and the night and drive out the beast. Look to Caliban as it is and remember what it was, and master the beast within yourselves.’

They looked at him astounded, as though the idea _he was actually dying_ was still struggling to make its way through their brains. So much for heroic last words, he thought. Perhaps someone would write them down for the benefit of those centuries down the line to read and feel suitably inspired.

He couldn’t empathise. Luther was ready to die. He had been dying by degrees for centuries, a febril heat consuming him from within. Once you swallowed the sun, you never stopped burning. That he had survived so long was a testament to his endurance. He bore Leman’s weight and Leman’s strength bore him onward, the two of them mixed up together beyond separation.

 _I’ll be with you soon,_ he told Leman, he said to himself.

_I can’t say I’ve missed you, beloved, because I haven’t left you._

Luther had contemplated the afterlife often since Leman’s death. Secular sensibilities or not, he could see it through Leman’s eyes, the ghosts behind his own vision. Most people just came apart when they died, becoming one with the slurry of everyone who had ever been or would be without the shelter of their bodies to hold them together, and raw souls precipitation from it when a child was born. Primarchs were too strong, too sure of their own shape even when dead to lose themselves properly in death. He wasn’t sure what would happen to Leman when he lost his anchor on the Materium that was Luther, just that they would be together still.

He was finished.


	9. Beads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fulgrim's first time with his farseer friend(-with-benefits).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fulgrim/OFC, pwp

‘How do I look?’

For all that he is a master orator, an experienced leader, a gene-bred diplomat, still Fulgrim finds himself speechless. He does not know.

He does not know if Atani is beautiful. She is not _human_. She is too tall, her limbs too long, her features too sharp. Is she beautiful for an eldar? Is she beautiful despite or for her alienness among humans? She is so utterly outside of any standard of beauty Fulgrim grew up with that he cannot possibly call her beautiful as one person judges another.

Yet… while Fulgrim has acknowledged beautiful aesthetics in others before, women and men, Nocturnians and off-worlders, he has never wanted to do anything about it before. They were attractive to look at, well proportioned and even of feature, but like a painting was beautiful or a star shower. It was a point of little note. Atani he wants to do something about. Because it was her.

She sighs, exasperated at him and a little condescending as usual. ‘Must I send you an embossed invitation?’

The thin shift of a substance that looked like silk but probably wasn’t fell from her shoulders to pool at her feet, leaving only the net of ivory and ebony beads he had gifted her with wreathing her pale skin.

Fulgrim’s breath catches. He is a primarch. He needs to breathe only rarely. There should not be this darkness at the edge of his vision, this ringing in his ears. There was no misunderstanding or cultural mishap. She wants what he wants. She wants him.

Atani waits for him. Not patiently--he seems her ticks of annoyance that in a human would manifest by tapping her foot, rolling her eyes, and the like, but she does put the imperative of moving on him.

Fulgrim has no memory of moving, only knows that he is before her now. He is unsure how to touch her, though that’s foolish. He has the strength to crush mountains but he has spent his life doing fine detail work like the thin silver links draped over her skin. He cannot possibly be as clumsy as he feels.

While he hesitates to lay his hands on her, he leans down and runs his tongue over the pink bud of her nipple. Too forward, he thinks, but she sighs in approval and buries her hands in his white hair to demand more in no uncertain terms. So he doesn’t stop. He traces the curve of her small, pert breast with his lips, then his tongue, upsetting the beads with a jangle like bells as he goes. He learns the smooth feel of her skin, the shift in texture at the edge of her areola, then he moves to her other breast to touch her there too.

Fulgrim’s hand hovers over his thigh and Atani growls at him to close the distance already. He smiles, playful, still sucking on her nipple, and takes the folds of the net into his hand instead. He reaches between her legs, his hand with the height of the beads between his skin and hers, and rolls the beads in between.

Atani yelps at the smooth balls of ivory and ebony moving against her where she is so sensitive. He can feel the heat of her arousal even from that distance. With just the tip of a finger he pressed one of the beads against her slit and then inside her, making her moan. Then another pressing the first deeper in. She’s so wet they slide easily into her. Fulgrim sets his fingertip against the upper edge of the bead and presses it to the side. She arches her back as the hard little balls rub against her hot, slick insides as they spin.

He draws the moans and gasps out of her, the tension and pleasure. Going down further, he runs his tongue over her sex, lapping up the taste of her arousal and pressing the smooth beads deeper into her.

He kisses her lips only after the fact, her body shivering deliciously in his arms with her orgasm and her taste on his tongue. ‘Not bad,’ she says. ‘For an amateur. Your first time touching another?’ When he doesn’t respond, she wraps her hand around his cock through his clothes and squeezes roughly. Fulgrim gasps, noting for the first time how hard he is and how constraining his garments are over his erection. ‘Being touched by another?’ She smiles wickedly. ‘A good effort, but we have plenty to practice.’


End file.
